Support

Virtual Audio Cable

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Support and feedback

VAC is developed by Eugene Muzychenko, an independent software developer living in Novosibirsk, Russia.

Bug fixes and updates are available at the VAC homepage.

You can also visit Other Eugene Muzychenko products page.

If you encountered an unexpected behavior and/or a technical problem, firstly please make sure that you have read the documentation and understand basic principles and usage rules of the product. Looking for troubleshooting information, please see troubleshooting section and FAQ/How to... lists at first.

If the problem is not covered by this manual, please email to the author.

Writing a message, add "Virtual Audio Cable" or "VAC" to the subject field. Messages with empty subject or only with a common word/phrase like "Hi", "Help request" or "Some questions" may be considered as SPAM and automatically killed by the filters.

Only English and Russian languages are supported in communication.

Please include following items in your email:

  • Application name (VAC), its version and type (trial or full).
  • Platform type (single/multiple CPU) and CPU type.
  • Operating system (type, language, build and patch level or service pack number).
  • Exact situation description:
    • What applications did you use (names and versions)
    • How their audio settings are configured
    • What Virtual Cables did you use (cable numbers, recording or payback operations).
    • How these cables are configured (what VAC Control Panel shows for these cables in "Cable parameters" box).
    • How VAC driver is configured (what VAC Control Panel shows in "Driver parameters" box).
    • VAC Control Panel window image may be useful.
    • What default shared recording/playback formats are set in the system, if any.
    • What actions did you perform
    • What did you expect
    • What was really happen
    • Exact error message texts (or pictures)
    • Other details, if any

For example, if you have a problem with audio connections, you should describe how you connect applications to audio devices (real and virtual), audio formats used, recording/playback modes (if any), and specify any other information that could help to understand your problem. The more meaningful information you provide, the faster and helpful response you will get.

If the problem is related to installation/uninstallation, please attach a log file created by Setup application.

Identifying yourself

Please identify yourself properly. If you are a registered (paid) user, please specify your order number or email address used for the order placement. If you use a different email address and don't specify your full name or your name is very common, it could be difficult or even impossible to find your order.

Explaining a problem

Please write problem explanation to be rich in content. Avoid meaningless messages like "I cannot install it" or "It did not work". Your message must be informative and allow to understand your problem. Please write as exact as possible: what did you want to achieve, what did you do, and what was happened. If you have received an error message and code, please include them into your report. For long messages, attach some screenshots instead.

Attaching files

If your problem can be described better by some data files, you can attach them to your message. For example, if you experience a strange noise in audio data, it could be useful to present a data fragment saved to a WAV/MP3 file. But don't send large (a minute or more) audio fragments. Send meaningful fragments only. In most cases, 5-10 seconds of audio is quite enough.

When possible, please avoid large (greater than 1-2 Mb) email attachments except explicitly asked.

Attaching logs

During installation and uninstallation, a log file is created, describing a process details. After successful installation, the log file is kept in the VAC installation directory (install.log file). If installation/uninstallation process fails, a log file is kept in the temporary directory; in such case, the installer informs you how this file is named and offers you to view its contents.

If your problem is related to installation/uninstallation process, please include log file contents into your report. You may either copy/paste file contents to the email text or attach a log file. It may help to investigate your problem.

You may be asked for Windows SetupAPI log (device installation process log). In Windows 2k/XP/2k3, log file is named setupapi.log and located in Windows root folder, usually named Windows. In Vista/Server 2008/Win7, log file is named setupapi.dev.log and located in the "inf" subfolder.

By default, only most important messages are included in SetupAPI log. To provide maximum information, it is better to enable all possible messages to be written to the log. To enable them, create a .reg file with the following text:

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup]
"LogLevel"=dword:4800ffff
"LogMask"=dword:fffffff

Save the file then double-click it and allow the changes to be added to the registry. Changes will take effect after Windows restart.

To restore default log settings, use .reg file with the following text:

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup]
"LogLevel"=-
"LogMask"=-

Attaching screenshots

To illustrate your problem, you can attach some screenshots to your report. If there is only a single informative window (a dialog box, an error message), take a "window screenshot" (Alt+PrintScreen keys), not full screenshot (single PrintScreen key). If there are several informative windows at the screen, arrange them to be all visible and take a full screenshot (single PrintScreen key).

Attaching screenshots, please pay attention to an image size. Don't attach uncompressed BMP images because they are very big and redundant, and don't wrap images with Word or PDF documents. Convert BMP images to a compressed image format (JPG, GIF and so on) using standard Windows Paint utility or a free image viewer/editor (IrfanView, XnView etc.). You can also reduce color depth, converting 24-bit color to 8-bit but don't resize an image because text information may become unreadable.

Attaching videos

If your problem is hard to be explained in text and static images, you may capture a screen video with a screen recording software like free CamStudio. Plase note that video clips may be large; don't attach clip files larger to 5-10 MB to a message. Upload them to a free file hosting service and provide a link in the message.

Attaching minidumps

If your system crashes, configure it to make a crash minidump. A minidump file contains some essential information about a crash, it may help to analyze your situation.

To configure system to create a minidump, open Windows Control Panel, then open System item. Select Advanced tab and click Settings button in Startup and Recovery group. In the Write Debugging Information box, choose "Small memory dump". Leave a default path (%SystemRoot%\Minidump) in the Small Dump Directory field.

Additionally, you may clear Automatically Restart checkbox to prevent automatic reboot after a crash. In such case, Windows will stay at the blue screen message.

If you had a system crash, then tried to enable minidump creation and saw it is already configured, it means you already have a minidump for this crash and can send it, not needing to wait for another crash.

After each system crash, a new minidump file is created in the Windows\Minidump folder. File names contain a date and a sequence number within a date. Locate 1..3 of last minidump files and attach them to your report. Make sure you are attaching only minidump (64 kb) files, not a big dump (several megabytes in size) files.

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